Founders That Stake (Part II): The Palm Tree Network’s Jose F. Aznar
Welcome to the second part of Founders That Stake, a series of stories that explore narratives behind the people who built the foundation of the staking industry. This second part of the series is with Jose F. Aznar of Palm Tree Network. Jose is another key figure in the Elrond protocol that has been around since the early days. The Palm Tree Network has a decentralized network with massive amounts of security. In general, The Palm Tree Network has 90 nodes spread across 12 data centers with an astounding 99.99% up-time.
As the first part of the series said, there is an intrinsic link between community and the idea of staking. With game theory being reliant on the interaction of rational decision makers, being close with your community is a must. This series focuses on the individuals that make up that community.
Some of the questions we’ll ask in this article include:
✅ What made you first become interested in staking enough to start a company around it?
✅ What has been the hardest part of running a staking-as-a-service brand?
✅ What are some of the issues with the modern staking industry? Where will it be in 5 years?
✅ Describe what it has been like to work with Elrond throughout the last year? What has the Elrond community been like to work with?
✅ What have been some of the all-time biggest moments in your Elrond crypto staking history?
✅ How important is sPoS for the progress of blockchain?
✅ How do you differentiate yourself as a staking company?
Elrond Exposed Jose to Staking
Jose would not have been exposed to staking had it not been for Elrond. In search of an opportunity for a passive income, Jose encountered Elrond’s economic model. Jose wanted an income opportunity that was less speculative as he advanced in his life.
“First of all, I would never think about staking long term until meeting the Elrond project, the team and the economic model of eGLD. I see a good opportunity to have passive income, with a sustainable economic model, during decades,” Jose said.
“As I’m getting older, I’m more focused on regular passive income of my assets instead of searching for trade after trade which is a more speculative approach,” he said.
500,000 Hours of Development
One of the most challenging parts about running a staking-as-a-service brand for Fco is the complexity of the Elrond’s ecosystem. He estimated that the development hours for building Elrond took over 500,000 hours. Obviously with a protocol this complex it would take a lot of time to explain. For Jose, the trouble isn’t really in explaining the protocol as much as it is explaining in a simple way.
“Elrond’s network is so advanced and complex… my estimation is that more than 500k hours of development has been needed to build the network. So the hardest part for me has been always explaining with simple words questions like how the protocol works to delegators, why the APR changes from one epoch to the next, what the top-up effect is, and so on,” Jose said.
Market Sentiment Toward Crypto Accounts Will Improve With UX Improvement
One of the largest obstacles to crypto going mainstream is the number of people who are still more comfortable saving and seeing a traditional bank account model. However, Jose argues that as the user-friendliness of staking apps increase, this will onboard more people than trading crypto. He bolstered his point by saying that people are interested in passive incomes.
“If you look around outside of crypto, you will see that for each person you know who feels comfortable trading stocks, you have 20 more people that feel more comfortable with a bank deposit model. My guess is that apps & networks will scale and improve UX, so millions of users will be able to participate in staking. Staking’s passive income model will have a much larger audience than trading,” Jose said.
Elrond Has Been the Ride of a Lifetime
Obviously the rise of Elrond has been meteoric over the last few years. Jose likened being able to interact with Elrond as being similar to interacting with the elite caliber of the SpaceX team on a daily basis. Jose said that the community from the investors to the executives are world-class.
“To participate with Elrond has been the most exciting year of my life, really. It’s like being able to participate on a daily basis with the SpaceX team. The Elrond team is not only moving fast, they are super transparent and kind with all the community. You can feel their vision in every decision they take,” Jose said.
“The community is absolutely amazing, smart investors that want to learn every day, that help each other, and with long term vision. People that understand what can be built with the proper tools and collaboration, as a community,” Jose said.
Impact of the Day of Main Net Launch
One of the most emotional days of Jose’s life was the day that the Elrond Main Net launched. The day was so impactful that it will stay with him for the rest of his life. Other riveting moments of Jose’s journey with Elrond have been the staking providers waiting list launch in October, as well as the Maiar App launch and beginning of Phase 3.
“Well, the mainnet launch was a really emotional day, I will remember forever. Other special moments were the launch of the waiting list last October (rewards for waiting for staking providers), launch of Maiar App of course and the start of phase 3 (providers accepting delegation).
Importance of sPoS
sPos has been and will continue to be one of the most significant events in the formation of the blockchain industry. Jose said that the admiration for sPos is that all the nodes in the network can validate the same quantity of blocks as well as the random selection functions.
“Secure Proof of Stake is one of the most innovative additions the Elrond team has made to the industry. A lot of first generation PoS based protocols think that security relies on the more stake a masternode possesses, the more blocks it validates. However, this creates a real concentration of power in the first masternodes. That means if one of the big masternodes fails, the network may face security problems,” Jose said.
“We love the sPoS approach because all of the nodes in the network will validate the same quantity of blocks. Several random selection functions get mixed in addition to reshuffling nodes between shards. This statistically makes it really hard to attack the network. And its design increases (in parallel) decentralization, security, and speed,” he said.
An Ethos of Hard Work
Palm Tree Network’s team didn’t form until Elrond needed a provider to test the network. When that happened, Jose and his team stepped up. From then on, the team has focused on building an education and supportive community that will help staking providers and the networks they support to grow.
“The team of Palm Tree started 2 years ago to help Elrond team to test the network, release after release. We never meet until then a team so open and with that constant hard work ethos. We are focused on education and support, as we believe truly in the Elrond vision of bringing millions of users to the ecosystem. We are involved in several projects to help the Elrond ecosystem grow, and we are committed to be at least for the next 10 years side by side with the Elrond community, “ Jose said.
“We are trying hard as well to help small Staking Providers to grow, as we believe hard on decentralization. We’ll continue pushing in that direction no matter what. The Palm Tree Network is and will be exclusive Staking Provider for Elrond network, the backbone of a new decentralized financial system.”
About the Palm Tree Network
Since the outset, the Palm Tree Network has aided the Elrond project. Since last year, they’ve been managing nodes on several testnets every day to ensure network quality and security. They also share Benjamin Mincu’s goal and commitment to working entirely with the Elrond network, devoting all of their attention and experience to the network’s success.
Visit the website here: https://thepalmtree.network
About Helios
Staking Helios Staking is a Staking-as-a-Service provider strictly dedicated to the growth of Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain networks. The firm is in direct collaboration with the Elrond Network as one of their chosen and trusted Genesis Launch partners. Services offered include eGLD tokens delegation & guaranteed annualized returns through innovating staking products.
Visit our website here: https://heliosstaking.com
